Six of the top candidates in the California gubernatorial race participated in a forum on Fresno State on Wednesday, speaking directly to the people of the Central Valley on agriculture and affordability issues.
While the forum was mostly peaceful between the candidates, Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco took the opportunity to rail against the Democratic party and the supermajority rule the left has enjoyed in California for the last decade.
Driving the news: The Maddy Institute and Western Growers, along with dozens of other agricultural organizations, hosted the candidate forum, inviting candidates who are polling at least 3% in the race. Fresno County Supervisor Buddy Mendes and former Assembly Minority Leader Kristen Olsen moderated the forum.
Hilton, Bianco, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, former Rep. Katie Porter (D–Irvine) and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa all attended.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D–Castro Valley) and billionaire activist Tom Steyer were also invited but declined to attend. That led Mendes to quip near the end of the forum, “Thank you all of our candidates for their thoughtfulness and also the fact that two chicken hearts didn’t bother coming here, so we’re glad you guys came.”
Partisan politics: While the forum was intended to focus on agriculture and affordability, much of the 90-minute debate was spent talking about partisan politics, with Bianco and Hilton routinely blasting Democratic rule while the four Democrats on stage called for both sides of the aisle to work together.
Hilton kicked things off by calling on the Democrats to apologize to the Central Valley for the water crisis.
“I think every single Democrat on this stage today should start with an apology, an apology for what their party has done to this area and this industry, stealing your water, piling on the regulations – 1,000% increase in the last decade or so – cutting the pay of agricultural workers,” Hilton said. “On and on, the assault on this industry has to stop, and they should start by apologizing for what they did.”
Villaraigosa drew some quiet laughs by telling Hilton that he will never become governor because of partisan politics.
“We can make this partisan. But let me be clear – if you want to make it partisan – you’re never going to get elected,” Villaraigosa told Hilton. “Because at the end of the day it is a blue state.”
“Didn’t you just see there revealed the arrogance of one-party rule? ‘It’s a blue state. We’re going to be in power forever. You’re just stuck with this.’ How outrageous, what contempt for the voters of this state,” Hilton said. “We have had enough. You’ve had enough. I’ve seen all over the state, this state demands change, and this is the year we’re gonna get it.”
Mahan responded to that disagreement by saying the binary partisan simplification is exactly what is wrong with American politics today.
Bianco called out Democrats for the “green scam” that has left California in an energy crisis.
“I love being the first Republican in this race, because it made all the rest of the Democrats have to act like Republicans – like they wanted to help you with the issues that we have,” Bianco said.
Deregulation and affordability: Porter made a surprising move, saying she is taking a page out of Hilton’s book and will propose no state income tax for people who make less than $100,000, an idea that Hilton has been campaigning on.
Part of the discussion turned to gas prices, with Mahan calling to suspend the gas tax and Bianco saying the state needs to completely eliminate it.
Porter said she wants to speed up permitting for green energy and put solar panels everywhere, while Hilton and Bianco pushed for oil independence. Villaraigosa said he would stop California Air Resources Board regulations that drive up prices. Becerra said he wants to freeze property insurance and utility payments until the state can fully investigate why those costs keep rising. Mahan called for comprehensive CEQA reform in order to speed up housing construction.
All of the candidates agreed that California is overregulated.
Water and the Delta: Olsen and Mendes asked the candidates for their thoughts on a number of water issues, including the impact of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA), which has implemented intense regulations intended to prevent groundwater overdraft and subsidence.
“You elect me as your governor so we can do away with it,” Bianco said.
The Democrats lauded the intent behind SGMA but said the law needs to be implemented better.
“SGMA’s not some big conspiracy,” Mahan said. “I think it’s overly complicated and bureaucratic, but we do need to protect groundwater resources and not continue to have subsidence. We’ve seen that there are long-term risks to what we’ve been doing, and the only answer is alternative expansions of supply and improvements in conveyance.”
Porter called water a collective resource saying the state needs to have rules in order to have a shared resource. She called the implementation of SGMA “deeply, deeply problematic.”
In an earlier answer, Porter also seemed to mix up groundwater and surface water, saying, “When we use surface water over time, we see subsidence. That’s a problem, and it’s real. There are places in this state that are losing a foot a year to subsidence. There are also a lot of places where they’ve been pumping surface water with no problems at all.”
Villaraigosa said he supports SGMA but added that it is too complicated, calling on the state to bring farmers in to help craft the rules.
Becerra, calling out Bianco, said he is not sure how people who want to get rid of rules that manage groundwater believe that the state can do the right thing without guidance. Becerra said that if he is governor, the state will get new water infrastructure and commitments on how the state will sustain its groundwater.
When asked about the management of the Delta, Hilton wants to axe recent biological assessments that have restricted water. He also wants to dredge the delta and finish Sites Reservoir and the Folsom South Canal.
State of emergency: The audience did not seem to take to Becerra as much as the other candidates, giving him very few moments where he shined or offered up substantive policy solutions.
But the former Health and Human Services Secretary left his mark with his repeated mentions of how he plans to declare a state of emergency to tackle numerous issues. He also called back to how he declared a state of emergency when he was part of the Biden administration as part of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Becerra said he would declare a state of emergency to boost housing production early in the forum, bringing it up several times over the course of his answers.
Bianco took advantage of that, saying late in the forum that he would also declare a state of emergency.
“This is not rocket science,” Bianco said. “[Becerra has] already told you how easy it’s going to be – a state of emergency. There is going to be a state of emergency, and it’s going to be to eliminate all of this regulation. Not to have a committee, not to come together and say how can we make the regulations better – it’s remove the regulations that are only California specific, that are destroying your industry in California that no other place in the country has to abide by. That is why California is failing. Regulations are easy to remove because they were not put in place by lawmakers. We can remove them with strokes of pens.”